The Darker Face of the Earth

Introduction

The Darker Face of Earth is a Rita Dove's play that has intense drama and gives energy through unconscious action, which is based on Greek Myth Oedipus, and African-American slavery presenting a typical situation of 1820's. Dove play revolves around a variety of characters.

Analysis

“The Darker Face of the Earth” by Rita Dove is a good example of a modern tragedy. One of its greatest devices used throughout the play was the theme of privilege turning into disaster for many of the main characters. Almost every main character feels this tragedy occur must endure the aftershock (Kennedy, 112).

The character that I feel this theme encompasses abundantly is the character Phebe. She is one of two mediums that the story is told through. Augustus refers to her as the sun, an allusion to Phoebus Apollo. He is the god of light and prophecy which are conveyed through her in the story. Her “light” sheds the truth of many secrets in the play and is linked to the fate of another through the prophecy given by Scylla. Her privilege is falling in love with Augustus. This was referenced to earlier in the play when Scylla presaged her fate. The situation Phebe was in made it unlikely for her to fall in love. It was given as a gift as Augustus appeared more and more in her life. She is warned against doing so by Scylla, but as Phebe realizes that Augustus loves her back, she cannot stop caring. This gift, however, turns into disaster as she realizes that she cannot help him. Augustus turns instead to an affair with Amelia, who is unknowingly been his son. This causes Phebe more pain and the more effort she puts into their relationship, the closer to falling into the inevitable tragedy she comes (Davis, 97). The final scene where Amelia is revealed to be Augustus' mother is the final part of the tragedy. Phebe falls with them as Augustus loses his will and Phebe are “crippled by the stone in her path.” At this point in time, she knows that he can never be saved from this event and her love for him causes her to be also permanently hurt.

Dove's play begins with the birth of her unfortunate tragic hero, Augustus, and the story jumps to twenty years later. In Rita Dove's The Darker Face of the Earth, the hero of the ...